


How She Knows What They Like

by MyLittleCornerOfSherlock



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Books, Musical Instruments, misjudging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:57:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyLittleCornerOfSherlock/pseuds/MyLittleCornerOfSherlock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Irene Adler reads her clients like books, plays them like instruments and leaves them wanting more.  So what happened with Sherlock Holmes?</p>
<p>A ficlet written for thelittlelottiediares in the Sherlock Secret Santa gift exchange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How She Knows What They Like

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thelittlelottiediaries](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=thelittlelottiediaries).



> Thanks to oldamongdreams for beta-ing for me. I had a really hard time getting into Irene's head. I hope this works.

“Well, I know what he likes...” Five words she left hanging in the air. How could one person possibly know what so many people like? Sure, Sherlock could deduce just about anything a person could possibly want to know, and a few things they didn’t. But how does someone find out (and remember) what so many people like?

Irene Adler had her ways. She was observant, intelligent, beautiful, sexy, decadent, seductive, and manipulative, not to mention absolutely skilled in the bedroom. And her clients loved her for all of those very reasons. Just one look, one question, one touch, and she could read their desires like a book. Thumb her way through to the juiciest, most debauched pages, and run her fingers over them, leaving a person trembling, willing to do whatever she asked just for another page to be turned.

Perhaps that’s how she saw them, her clients, as books, half written. Each with their own story to tell, blank pages ready to be written on, and she their poet. There were romance novels, wanting to woo or be wooed. More spiritual works, needing to confess their sins. There were the dark fantasies, needing to be punished, and still others who were their own journals, interesting stories that needed to be told, pulled to the surface.

Maybe she saw them as instruments, uniquely tuned individuals to be played, fingered, beaten, made to sing. Music flowed out of them from her merest touch, as she silkily stroked their heart strings. Percussions, the heartbeat of their family or company. Strings, the diviners and performers. Woodwinds breathy and deep. Brass, loud and enigmatic.

And she remembered each page, each note, each book, each instrument, how best to read them, how best to play them. Because that’s what she “liked”, to break each person down to those individual words and notes. To read and play them like no other person. To be the poetess, the songstress they’d always come back to. She “liked” to be the addiction. 

So, when she finally met Sherlock Holmes (ever the addict), she thought...no she knew, how to read him, how to play him. And so she began to thumb her way through his pages (he was a leather moleskin journal) and pluck his strings (he was a violin of course). She read through what was written, oddly many chemical formulas seemed to be what was inked onto the pages. Sadly, she wasn’t familiar with Chemistry, she’d have to pick that up one day, and the violin could only be plucked, he had no bow. No matter, she could work with this. 

But what Irene didn’t understand about those chemical formulas was that they were what made up a certain Army doctor. The chemistry of his favorite tea, his sweat, gunpowder, adrenaline, endorphins, his blood type, wool, leather, and the building blocks carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc. All things John Watson. And as for the bow that made the violin sing, well that was none other than John Watson himself.

She had done what so many others had, she had underestimated the unassuming man, and that was why she failed.


End file.
